Case Your patient is bleeding. A lot. Their vital signs are abnormal. They look very sick. (I am being intentionally vague, because the post is going to look at massive hemorrhage in general, rather than getting into the specifics of any one condition.) This post is a condensed clinical summary […]
In the massive hemorrhage deep dive, I mentioned that there were a number of large trials in the works that would further define practice. One of those trials – CRYOSTAT-2 – was just published, and adds important information about the role of empiric fibrinogen administration (in the form of cryoprecipitate) […]
Is there anything emergency doctors love to debate more than airway? We have fancy new tools versus old school badassery. I sort of want to fit into both camps. I want to be the doc who has always succeeded with direct laryngoscopy, while also being young enough to adapt to […]
Although I think we all now recognize the fundamental importance of social determinants of health, I don’t think emergency medicine has found a way to adequately integrate this into our care. That is a shame, considering the huge amount of effort we put into things like tetanus shots or TXA […]
Introduced to the world by our friend Scott Weingart, delayed sequence intubation (DSI) is often summarized as procedural sedation for the procedure of preoxygenation. (Weingart 2011, Weingart 2015) It is a brilliant concept, makes a ton of sense on paper, and anecdotally has seemed to help a number of my […]
Transfusion seems like the simplest intervention in medicine. The patient is losing blood, so let’s put some back in. Not much more complicated than an oil change. Sure, you need to use a specific brand, but as long as the system is topped up, everything should run just fine. Therefore, […]
This is a guest post by Dr. Lanujan Kaneswaran. Lanujan is a second-year Family Medicine resident at the University of Toronto. He has a background in medical health informatics and machine learning. His areas of interest include artificial intelligence and machine learning in medicine, and health equity through advocacy and […]
There is an odd paradox in medicine: our sickest patients are in the most need of intervention, but they are also the most likely to have complications from those interventions. (This is why I have always opposed the “kitchen sink” philosophy, in which we throw everything at an apparently dying […]
This is a guest post by Dr. Katie Lin. Dr. Katie Lin is an Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of Calgary, a Stroke Attending with the Calgary Stroke Program, and a critical care Flight Transport Physician with STARS Air Ambulance in Alberta. She completed her residency training and stroke fellowship in Calgary […]